BRINGING HOME HOPE
Spoilers for major plot points of Resident Evil Requiem
[RE9!Leon / CIA Agent!Wife!Reader]
(You’re waiting for the call that will make you a widow. And then the front door opens.)
Word Count: ~ 4.7k Rating: E - a lot of hurt, a lot of comfort, some very emotional smut in between Author's Note: So this is me coping and my version of this scene we all apparently need. Love all the different takes I've seen so far, and all aimed to just give Leon the peace he deserves. I sat with a lot of unpeaceful feelings for quite a few days and am a little embarassed actually that this game had such a big impact on me. I really got emotional damage from this, from Leon's whole arc (no pun intended), from going through Raccoon City, from effing Victor Gideon writing that damn note what the helly...all the way to where we now stand. Writing it down and talking to some people helped a lot though 🥰 I don't know why but I see Leon being married to another Agent, it crystallized for me over time. Glad we can cope together. All the love, Milli 💕
Somewhere in that dim space between sleep and consciousness, your mind betrayed you.
It tormented you with the single worst nightmare your brain could conjure – showing you distorted faces of strangers, a revolver, blood. He was on his knees, holding himself upright for as long as he could, because he wouldn’t give up until the very last second. But what your mind wanted to show you was that last second.
You knew it was a dream. You fought against it with everything you had, trying to claw your way back to reality – the one where you had forced yourself to stay awake for over 24 hours, nerves strung tight like wire, your eyes glued to your laptop, searching for an answer.
Exhaustion had overtaken you. And the moment your eyes closed, something slipped in that your waking mind would never allow: hopelessness.
You were half there, half here. The presence of the computer mouse in your hand clashed violently with the horrific image behind your closed eyelids. The way he coughed up blood, the black markings now everywhere – his hands, his arms, his face.
It was as if he was looking at you one last time. When he spoke, no sound left his lips – but you knew the movement better than anyone. Three words, unmistakable:
“I love you.”
A gunshot – your scream made real. It tore from your throat and jolted your body upright. You looked around wildly, half-expecting it all to have been nothing but a nightmare, that your husband would rush into the room and ask what had happened.
It didn’t take long to realize that being awake wasn’t any better than the torment of sleep. The real world was hardly kinder. Your dry throat ached as you swallowed, your racing heart refused to slow, just like the panic twisting in your stomach.
Your laptop still sat open in the darkness of the ongoing night. Your desk was covered in stacks of folders – more or less illegally obtained and printed documents – and a long list of numbers. People who still owed you a favor or two.
Despite your position at the CIA, despite digging deep into the servers, despite giving Sherry every bit of access she needed – no matter the consequences – you had hit nothing but dead ends. And now you hadn’t heard from Sherry in far too long.
You expected the call any second. The one telling you that you were a widow. Those calls always came no matter what time it was.
If only you had gone with him. You were just as trained. Just as resourceful. Just on a different side of the government.
But he hadn’t allowed it. Said he wouldn’t be able to focus if he had to worry about you.
Not that you weren’t used to it. Not that you didn’t know the dangers. You had always lived with the risks of the job.
But this time was different.
This time, Leon wasn’t fighting something – not the next bioweapon.
He was fighting time.
By the time Sherry had given you the update about the Raccoon City Syndrome – ridiculous name – Leon had already been too far away. You never would’ve caught up to him. And Sherry had convinced you, far too skillfully, that the two of you could help him best by continuing to search for answers.
Rarely had you ever felt this helpless. If Leon died, you would die. You might both be trained agents, but when all was said and done, you were just two people. And you couldn’t live with the knowledge that you hadn’t saved your husband. You couldn’t carry the same burden he had all these years. You weren’t that strong. Not like him.
You were just about to reach for your phone – to call Sherry again, or try Chris, or Rebecca, anyone who might know something – when a familiar sound ripped your body out of the desk chair before your mind could even process it.
The apartment door.
You stumbled forward, bracing your hands against the doorframe, forcing yourself upright through a dizzy spell. Your vision was still blurred as you stared into the hallway.
With sheer willpower, you waited for your sight to steady – until you could finally focus on the figure standing down the hall.
A heavy breath left you.
He stood there. Holding a damn bouquet of flowers.
The contrast was almost absurd. The bouquet was full of bright, untouched blossoms – and he looked like he’d been dragged through hell. His clothes were dirty, his face covered in cuts – yet there was a careful smile on his lips.
One heartbeat passed.
“Hey honey… I’m home.”
There was hesitation in his voice, like he wasn’t sure if it was okay for him to be here.
“Oh my god,” you breathed, the last bit of air leaving your lungs.
You pushed off and crossed the distance between you as fast as you could.
Leon knew.
As you ran toward him, his shoulders dropped, his gaze melting into something soft – devotion, exhaustion – and he opened his arms just as you reached for him.
The paper around the bouquet crinkled as your bodies collided. His arms were strong, just like you remembered, wrapping tightly around you. He pulled you in with force, his large frame folding into yours, his forehead resting against your shoulder.
Standing on your toes, you pressed yourself into him, clinging to his familiar, broad shoulders, reveling in the fact that he was here – that he was breathing, that you could feel him.
“What happened?” you asked, trying to pull back, but he only held on tighter, didn’t answer.
“Leon,” you insisted, loosening your grip from around his neck and pressing against his upper arms.
“I’m sorry,” he mumbled against your shoulder, burying his face deeper into the crook of your neck, pressing a kiss there.
“Why are you sorry?” you asked quietly, giving his bicep a reassuring squeeze.
“You’re shaking.”
With his request that you stay behind – that you help Sherry search for a cure instead of going into the field with him – he had asked everything of you. He knew that. He could never tell you how close he had come to shaking hands with death. Never tell you how many times he had thought of you, how many times he feared he wouldn’t be able to make it right.
Only the thought that you were safe from the most dangerous virus in the world had kept him going. And in the end, even that reason would have been futile.
Leon could never tell you that this time, he hadn’t even been able to save himself.
“It’s okay.” You pressed gently against his arms again, and this time, Leon let you push him back.
Your gazes locked as your hands traced the contours of his arms, all the way down to where his hands now rested on your hips.
No gloves. His skin was smooth. You felt his wedding band beneath your fingers.
Your eyes flicked to his neck – to the spot that had already been blackened when he left.
No black marks. No Raccoon City Syndrome.
Relief flooded your entire system.
You guided his hands forward, took the bouquet from him, and set it down on the counter beside you. His palms were warm in yours – no trace left of the illness that had been consuming him, the reason he had to leave, the reason everything in you had been so certain there would be no way out this time.
“What happened?” you asked again, finding his eyes “The last thing I heard from Sherry was that you found ARK.” Your hand rose to his cheek, fingers slipping into his hair, your thumb tracing along his jaw – anything to make sure he was really here. “What happened down there, Leon?”
Leon caught your wandering hand, never once breaking eye contact – not even as he pressed a kiss into your palm.
Waiting for answers was becoming unbearable. You had to suppress the urge to shake him, while he simply looked down at you with so much love in his eyes that your chest tightened.
How close had you really come to losing him?
“A lot,” he finally said. “I’ll tell you everything… under the shower? Look – I got blood and dirt all over you.”
His hand brushed over your neck, trying to wipe away the mixture of blood and grime from your skin. Sherry hadn’t been able to reach you, your phone probably dead from not being charged as you somehow managed to forget regularly – so Leon hadn’t wasted a second.
He had come straight home.
Straight back to you.
“Yeah… okay,” you agreed quickly. You just wanted to feel him – to wash away what had happened to him, to wash away Raccoon City.
Even if that would never truly be possible… you would try. Again and again.
Leon let out a quiet, satisfied sigh as warm water cascaded over his head. He ran a hand through his hair, then over his face. Dirty streams trailed down his solid frame.
With careful fingertips, you traced the numerous cuts and bruises. Aside from the usual injuries after an intense mission, he looked… good.
Not just good – he carried himself differently. Straighter. Lighter, somehow.
“Elpis wasn’t a virus,” Leon began without preamble. “Pass me the shampoo?”
You reached behind you to the shelf, opened the shampoo – the one you had insisted your husband use instead of his beloved 5-in-1 shampoo, shower gel, industrial filler – and poured some into your hands.
“So it was a cure?”
Leon’s gaze dropped to you, soft, yielding – taking in the way the water beaded over your hair, the shine in your eyes as you lifted your arms and let your fingers slide into his.
“Yeah,” he confirmed your, quite obvious, conclusion. If Elpis wasn’t a virus, not a bioweapon, then it had to be a cure. “Actually… a cure for everything. Every virus out there.”
Leon closed his eyes, savoring the gentle pressure of your fingers against his scalp. Another low, content sound rumbled from his chest. His large hands found your body, gliding over your soft, wet skin.
God, it felt good to touch you. To know he had time again – time with you.
“Well, thank god.” You exhaled deeply, not even willing to begin unpacking what a universal antiviral would mean for the world. The only thing that mattered was that it had saved your husband. “How did you find out?”
Your hands slipped from his hair, down along his neck, over his shoulders, his arms, flattening against his strong chest – a silent cue for him to rinse.
The foam washed away everything on the surface. Dirt loosened from his hair, from his skin – but like always, so much remained. This time, even with Elpis offering a chance to make things right… the memories of Raccoon City clung stubbornly.
“I didn’t,” Leon said, tipping his head back into the stream of water. “It was Grace.”
“Grace?” you echoed, surprised for only a second before collecting yourself. Anyone in this line of work knew how quickly people could be pushed beyond their limits.
The FBI girl had saved your husband.
You gave a tired smile. “Guess I’ll have to write her a thank-you note, then.”
You swallowed the small pang of regret – that it hadn’t been you. You couldn’t have done what Grace did. Couldn’t have set the same chain of events into motion.
Leon chuckled softly.
“Come here,” he murmured, opening his arms, inviting you in.
You melted into him, skin against skin beneath the steady rain of the shower. The water drummed gently against your head, and a quiet calm settled in – until you felt the crushing exhaustion of the past day begin to catch up with you, adrenaline slowly draining away.
“Tell me what happened down there,” you mumbled anyway, your ear pressed to his chest, eyes closed, listening for his heartbeat.
“Mhm,” he hummed, his hands moving up and down your back in slow, soothing strokes. “Okay… but don’t get mad.”
You smiled faintly. “Try me.”
Leon couldn’t really refuse you, not when you asked like that. The least he could do was soften the edges. Leave out some amounts of blood he’d coughed up, the brief blackout in the dump – anything that might reveal just how close he had come to dying.
But it was enough.
Cold fear crept back into your body as he spoke. You knew your husband. He hid the worst of it behind cheeky remarks and bad jokes. He couldn’t fool you.
He had almost died.
And worse – he had been forced to relive it all. Raccoon City. The R.P.D., files you knew, too. You didn’t press him about what it had felt like, not directly – but your heart cracked when he made a passing remark about the West Office, the “WELCOME LEON” banner, and Gideon's note beside it. Just a throwaway comment, but you heard it.
“Jesus. If that asshole wasn’t already dead, I’d go and shoot him myself,” you muttered.
You were lying in bed now, facing each other, having done little more than dry off before collapsing naked into the familiar sheets, shutting the world out.
Leon let out a quiet laugh. “I bet you would, baby.”
You studied his face closely. The face you knew like the back of your hand, and yet… different. Softer, somehow. Some of the lines smoothed out, the blue of his eyes deeper again, his complexion healthier.
Strange, how used you had become to a sick version of your husband.
Strange, how much the virus had actually taken from him over the years.
It was unbearable to think about.
“You look good,” you whispered.
Your wedding ring caught a soft ray of the rising sun as you lifted your hand to brush a strand of hair from his face, the light slipping through a narrow gap in the heavy curtains of your bedroom, drawn tight to keep the outside from ever touching him again.
“Feel good.”
Gentle fingers traced along your upper arm, your bodies completely wrapped in the weight of the warm, fluffy blanket. Heat spread around you and between you. Now that he lay beside you – alive, breathing, and for the foreseeable future – you finally began to settle again. Not least because of his way of taking everything so lightly. It rubbed off on you, whether you wanted it to or not. His content expression rested slightly crumpled against his bent, strong bicep, affection in his eyes as you continued to touch each other softly.
With the calm, however, came concern, and you found yourself worrying more about his mental state than his physical one.
“I’m sorry.” Your voice stayed quiet, as if you didn’t want the world to hear words meant only for him in this moment.
His gaze grew a little more serious, but the soothing movement of his fingers on your skin didn’t stop.
“That you had to go back there,” you finished your thought. “I hate it. Even if it – right there –” you could hardly grasp it yourself, that the last piece of Raccoon City inside him could only be destroyed in Raccoon City itself, “ – even if there was no other way. Just the thought of it is torture to me. I’m so sorry I couldn’t be there with you.”
Your heart felt heavy. There were so many questions on the tip of your tongue – questions that could potentially break you. First, you needed to calm down, to process Leon’s return, his healing. Then, maybe then, you could confront him with them.
A warm, living hand cupped your cheek, his thumb brushing gently over your skin.
“It’s okay. I’m actually glad you weren’t there for it. It was ugly.”
“I can handle ugly,” you replied quickly.
“I know.” His face moved closer. “But I couldn’t have handled watching you suffer for me.”
You sighed. You understood. You really did. But you wished so much you had been at his side. Even with Grace, so you could have helped them both.
“I love you.” His hand slipped into your damp hair, resting at the back of your neck.
You let yourself be drawn in by the gentle pressure and his even gentler eyes, giving in as you closed the last distance between you.
His lips were as soft as ever as they met yours with a reverence you could only describe as worshipful. Feeling him again, after those endless hours of fear, was like breaking the surface for air – though with every movement of his mouth against yours, he stole more and more of that breath away.
His large body, which had lingered at a loving distance just to take you in, shifted closer until warm skin met yours – and it felt more like coming home than walking through that door ever could have. And suddenly, it was impossible for Leon to imagine a reality where he didn’t return to you. As always, after he had nearly lost his life.
But this time, something was different. This time, he had been healed of something that had plagued him all along, without him even knowing it, until it had almost been too late. The last piece of Raccoon City had been purged from his body. The memories remained, but the past no longer possessed him. Not in the way that made him chase something unreachable.
He felt you in an entirely new way – his beautiful, strong wife, who knew everything about him and had chosen to marry him anyway. Who gave him safety in a world where nothing was safe. His anchor – no, his harbor – where he could simply… be. No expectations. No hero. No agent. Just a husband who wanted to make his wife happy.
He would make it up to you.
His hand moved to the curve of your neck, gently tipping your head back. You followed, opening yourself to him, your arm draped over his solid body. Leon murmured softly against you – the kiss deepened, more sensual now, just a touch hungry. Skin brushed against skin, fanning slow-burning flames within both of you – that ever-present fire that would never go out.
It grew hotter, warming everything you were, until a burning longing rushed through your veins – the need to be close, to feel each other in the way only you could.
Leon’s hand wandered down from your neck, tracing slow, indulgent paths over your soft skin, never breaking your connection, only deepening it.
Those exploring touches tingled along your nerve endings, goosebumps rising wherever his fingers passed.
You drew in a breath at the growing pull in your belly, the soft throb at your core, anticipating Leon’s touch.
“Leon…” you breathed against his lips, making him real – well, more real.
“You are everything, you know,” he murmured back, his breath mingling with yours.
Your palm rested flat against his chest, feeling his heart pounding wildly – for you, for both of you.
“I love you,” you said, and for some inexplicable reason your heart tightened just before a quiet moan slipped from your lips against his, as his hand moved between your thighs.
Almost automatically, you rolled onto your back, opening yourself to him, giving him better access to the place he knew so well. His lips brushed your cheek, your jawline, your neck, while his skilled touch drew slow circles over your clit that made your breath hitch. He moved his fingers further down, slid first one, then two fingers into you, pushed deep, finding the spot inside you he knew you liked best.
He watched your reactions, noticing them more clearly than ever – the way your lips parted slightly, your eyelids fluttered closed to savor it, then opened again to meet his gaze. The small, adorable sounds that escaped you. He would listen to them until he died of old age, and not a second sooner.
“Turn around, baby,” he instructed gently, his voice deep and comforting.
You followed again, letting his presence guide you as you rolled onto your side, him settling behind you. With one smooth movement he freed your upper bodies from the blanket before his hand trailed down your form, over your thigh. He grasped it gently, lifting your leg as far as the covers allowed.
The air around you buzzed – not with reckless hunger, but with intimacy, with trust. That was what made you arch toward him.
Leon reached for his cock, already aching for you, searching for you, and aligned himself carefully. He pressed forward slowly, easing into you inch by deliberate inch, savoring every bit until he was fully buried inside you and a soft sound hummed from your throat.
He stretched out one arm to cradle your head, offering you the best pillow in the world, and drew you close with the other. His large, warm body wrapped around you like a living blanket – except the first slow thrust stole the air from your lungs before you pulled it back in again.
Leon groaned into the curve of your neck, pressing a kiss into your hair as he held you as close as possible and moved inside you again, and again. He knew your body so well it didn’t take much to send you both drifting toward that shared state of bliss.
His movements were deliberate, deep, almost reverent, aimed not just at pleasure, but at closeness, at dissolving into one another. Low, satisfied sounds rumbled in his chest whenever your velvet walls tightened around him.
They traveled straight to your ear, and you answered with eager sighs of your own.
More than anything, it was comforting to be here like this again – feeling whole, unified – while he whispered into your ear. Not just sweet nothings, but promises. Declarations of love. Vows that he would remain at your side.
“You saved me. You did, and you always will.”
The words rushed through you, and a choked sound escaped your lips. It overwhelmed you. The intensity of it. You had been intense like that before – but today something in Leon had shifted.
“Only because you saved me first,” you answered softly, affectionately, reaching back to take his hand.
Leon exhaled sharply.
Your fingers intertwined, skin sliding against skin as his rhythm faltered slightly. He tried to hold onto it, to keep taking you slowly, deeply – but your words had struck something possessive and tender inside him.
“Fuck,” he breathed hoarsely. “I married the perfect woman.”
He moved through you with what restraint he had left, drawing higher sounds from you, a soft whimper. His exhausted body began to betray him, chasing that place where you would both end up spent and tangled together. His hand found your hip, pulling you back against him.
You clung to the arm beneath your head, moaning quietly, not searching for the perfect climax, but for him. More of him. All of him.
“I’m gonna come,” he breathed against your ear.
A soft exhale left you. “Yes,” you whispered your consent.
His fingers tightened against your skin as a shudder seized him, running down his spine and through his entire body. His breathing turned ragged as he spilled inside you, giving everything his tired body had to offer, knowing it wasn't enough, but with all the will in the world to show you that you belonged to him, and he to you. As long as he could, he drew out the moment, letting the wave slowly subside with increasingly smaller, fading thrusts, until a deep sense of peace settled over.
“You okay?” he asked breathlessly, still inside you, his eyes searching for your face.
The aftershock of everything – the unbearable search for a cure; the fear; the relief that he was alive; the closeness you had thought, at times, you had lost forever – cracked your composure wide open. Where adrenaline had carried you before, your soul now lay completely exposed, stripped bare in front of Leon and everything he was.
The moment the question left his lips, tears flooded your eyes, unstoppable. For a second you tried to hold them back, but it quickly became clear it was useless. They blurred your vision, stealing your view of your fingers intertwined with his.
Your chest tightened, your heart aching. You squeezed Leon’s hand, searching for something to hold onto. A sob broke free.
“Hey, heyhey – ” Leon pressed himself closer, hoping you could feel his steady breathing against your neck, the kiss on your shoulder – that he was here, that he was holding you, that he wasn’t going anywhere.
Even as his own heart grew heavy, as he felt more helpless than he had in any moment of his infection. He had almost made you a widow. And he knew you knew that he would do it all again in a heartbeat. Maybe minus the wrongly made assessment. But he would take every measure to keep you safe.
His tenderness didn’t make it better. Quite the opposite. The tears streamed freely down your face. You hated how you looked when you cried. Covering your face with your hands, you let yourself sob harder, more openly, with every passing second – lost in that maelstrom of fear and overwhelming relief.
“I thought I lost you,” you sobbed into your hands.
Leon exhaled heavily, scattering small kisses wherever he could reach. He nudged you to turn around, breaking your position only to pull you into his arms as tightly as possible. Against his chest, he felt the dampness of your tears as your hands clutched at him, crying everything out.
Your mind fired wildly, your control gone – gone even enough to keep your questions buried.
“What if Grace hadn’t known the password?”
Leon tensed slightly, no answer ready.
“What if she had destroyed Elpis?”
He said your name softly – a warning, a plea not to follow that line of thought.
But you barely heard him through your sorrow. He would have died there. He had walked in willingly, like always, without asking for backup. And in the end, it had been Chris Redfield and his Hounds who pulled him out.
“You were ready to die, weren’t you?” The words sent panic surging through your body, your sobs turning harsher, shaking you. “Oh God, you expected it.” Your lungs tightened, breath coming in shallow, strained bursts, your face aching with the force of it.
“Look at me,” Leon said, gentle but firm.
“No.” You pressed yourself desperately against his chest. Even after all these years, you didn’t want him to see you like this.
“Please. Look at me.”
You didn’t stand a chance in that state. Leon created just enough space to tilt your chin upward.
He had seen you cry before, but not like this. Not so completely undone. You usually cried from anger, not from this kind of grief. The sight made his chest tighten – and before he could stop it, tears welled in his own eyes, blurring his vision.
He wiped at them quickly, but you had already seen.
Tears in your husband’s eyes were a rare thing – so rare it startled you enough that your own tears faltered.
“Leon…” He leaned into your hand against his cheek.
“I love you,” he said again, as if he could never say it enough. “And I’m here. And we have so much time.” A small, careful smile appeared. “No more T-Virus.”
No more virus – and with it, no more shadow of Raccoon City. Elpis would erase the T-virus and every other virus in the world. What that would mean for the world… you would face that together. What mattered more was that Leon’s guilt could finally come to an end. The villains of this world might try, again and again, to convince him he couldn’t save anyone…
He reached for a tissue on the nightstand and held it up to your nose.
“Hard blow,” he said, a glint of amusement in his eyes.
You blinked, then rolled your eyes. “Gimme that.” You snatched the tissue and blew your nose. “Bet this isn’t the hard blow you envisioned for your return.”
He chuckled, and you couldn’t help the small smile that followed from your own lips. “Ah, it was fifty-fifty.”
…even if Leon had believed it himself for a long time, you would prove to him that he was so much more than what people said about him. More than just someone who had to save the world.
Because he saved your world every time he came home.
And that he never had to bear the burden alone, and never would again.
